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“You didn’t happen to conduct business while you were here, did you?” He stared at her, an eerie stillness settling around him. Not the motionlessness of a human. This was absolute. As if he was carved from marble. Most of the time vampires made an effort to appear human. They breathed, they blinked, and she’d heard that they occasionally smiled—although Peri was convinced that was an urban myth—but there was nothing human about them.
She cleared a sudden lump from her throat. She doubted Valen would kill her for being snarky, but business was a different matter altogether. She was in his territory and that meant she needed his approval to earn money.
He was perfectly within his rights to punish her.
She chose her words with care. “Technically the business was conducted at the Witch’s Brew,” she said, referring to the New Jersey coffee shop/ bookstore/mage-for-hire business she managed with her friends. “The details were negotiated, the contract was signed and the money delivered outside your territory. I just executed the contract here.” She did her best to look innocent. It was a stretch. “There’s no law against magic, is there?”
“If it’s meant to harm a demon.” He deliberately paused. “Or me.”
“There’s nolastingharm,” she insisted, blocking out the image of Elias’s current situation. Now didn’t seem the appropriate moment to laugh at the knowledge his balls would soon be expanding to the size of balloons. “Just a couple days of extreme discomfort.”
He bent his head, allowing her an up close view of his painful beauty. The narrow length of his nose. The sculpted cheekbones and surprisingly full lips. The smooth perfection of his pale skin. And the hypnotic power smoldering in his silver eyes.
“You play a dangerous game,” he whispered.
A warning zinged through her as she began to sway forward. Vampires had the ability to manipulate the minds of both humans and demons. Only mages possessed the ability to resist.
The ability, she reminded herself, but not always the will…
With a jerky motion she stepped back, breaking the spell he was weaving around her.
“Dangerous games are the only games worth playing.” She tilted her chin. “It’s late and I’m tired. Is there anything else you wanted?”
Peri could have bitten off her tongue as his lips parted, revealing the tips of his lethal fangs.
“I’m currently considering the various possibilities.”
The cool words slid over her with a silken promise. Or maybe it was a threat. Hard to tell. Both possibilities sent a tingle of excitement to the pit of her stomach.
Time to make a strategic retreat.
“I’ll let you consider them while I head home.” She inched away, feeling the protective wards press against her back.
“Run, little witch.” The silver eyes darkened to smoke. “You can’t hide.”
“Annoying bastard,” she muttered, even as she turned and did exactly as he commanded.
She ran.
Chapter 2
Peri exited the covered shelter that served as a train station in Linden, New Jersey, grimacing as the night air wrapped around her like a soggy blanket. It wasn’t just the humidity, although it was thick enough to cut with a knife. It was the lack of magic. Any area outside a Gyre was called a dead zone for a reason. It was a void between the pools of enchantment.
Thankfully, Peri was a mage, not a demon. She could still use her magic even if it didn’t have the same potency. It was the sizzle of electric energy that she missed as she headed down the stairs and across the parking lot to the shadowed street. And perhaps the cool wash of power from a vampire…
No, no, no. She shut down any lingering thought of Valen. She’d done what she was paid to do. Time to move on to the next assignment.
Zigzagging along city blocks lined with auto repair garages, liquor stores and mini marts, she at last could see the neon light in the shape of a witch’s hat with a coffee cup in the center.
The Witch’s Brew was sandwiched between a tanning salon and a falafel restaurant, with large windows that were currently decorated with unicorns and rainbows, along with the specials of the day: Mocha coffee. Chocolate espresso. Lemon bars. And blueberry scones.
She was halfway down the street when a hunched form detached from the shadows of the tanning salon. The man was wearing a velour tracksuit with a fishing hat pulled low to cover his hair. His face was covered by a bushy beard, making it hard to determine the man’s age and ethnicity, but he’d been hanging around the neighborhood for as long as Peri had been there.
“Hey, Joe.” Peri had no idea if that was his name, but it’s what the neighbors called him. Narrowing her gaze, she watched him shuffle forward. “It’s late for you to be out here.”
“You smell like you rolled in goblin turds,” Joe retorted.
Peri wrinkled her nose. She always looked forward to the man’s scathing insults. Some of them were creative enough to win an Emmy. Tonight’s was…mundane.
